From My Garden: Seasons' Greetings !

In the deepest German winter, when the lights come on in the morning and are never turned off until bedtime, it is hard to imagine that spring and the reawakening of nature is just around the corner, a few months away. 
As I know for sure that a winter depression will befall me each year, I decided last spring to make a series of photographs of my garden in all seasons to have something to look forward to. I chose the daily view from my kitchen window for this project. 

Autumn view

The window goes north, so this corner of my garden is quite dark at all times of the year. When planning this corner, I devised a theme in green and white with bright leaves and white flowering shrubs that would be nice to brighten up the area. 

Evergreen shrubs with interesting varied leaves dominate both sides of the path. Cephalotaxus harringtonia, the "head yew" with its distinctive needle heads, one for each year of growth, sits in a sheltered position in front of the wall of the house next to Camellia "Shiragiku" (behind) who needs a sheltered spot as well. It has been growing and thriving in this spot for the past 14 years. It prefers not to be exposed to wintry sun, so a spot facing west against a wall is always good for not so hardy camellias. In front, on the right hand side of the Cephalotaxus, I used to have a Buxus elegantissima, a white box tree, very rare, since 2003. Unfortunately, last year it succumbed to the ugly Chinese Buchszünssler moth and had to be removed. 

April

Underneath we have hellebores, Symphytum grandiflorum album and on the corner the unusual Saxifraga pennsylvanica with its memorable name, which sends up a flowering stem each May. 

On the left hand side, we have several white-flowering Viburnums, underplanted with hosta, wild strawberries, sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) and pink azaleas in spring.

May

In the back before the path turns to the right and on around the house there is a white-leaved Euonymus, an ivy trimmed as hedge and Viburnum plicatum to the right. A red hazelnut is towering over them.

Between Cephalotaxus and the white Buxus we had planted Rodgersia. Now that the Buxus is gone, it enjoys the added space and has grown and filled the spot with its large pinnate chestnut-like leaves which turn a beautiful bright yellow-orange before they fall off.

October

Seasons' Greetings! 

The Photographic Garden Diary : April's Camellias

This year all Camellia have  by some unknown collusion  decided to flower at the same time:

Hagoromo in pots on the terrace

detail of Hagoromo flower

Shiragiku

Dr. Burnside

and Mary Phoebe Taylor. She sheds her blossoms complete which give a nice still-life picture together with other leaves from a copper beech and a Magnolia tree above her: 

 

In recent years their flowering time was spread out between December/January (Hagoromo) and May at the latest (Shiragiku) with Mary Phoebe Taylor (end of March) slightly before Dr. Burnside (April). We have no explanation for this year's anomaly.  

We had planted tulips in autumn. My idea was to have them accompany the Rhododendrons with some light pink/lavender low on the ground in May. I had chosen the late tulip "Cum laude" supposedly to bloom late in May, on 40 cm stalks - I bought them on the market from a Dutch vendor with large open vats full of bulbs. My fault: what came out of the ground was a bit surprising: a light reddish-pink early tulip, in April, quite large and on rather long stems. I have no clue what its name might be. 

(in the foreground is the well-scented Narcissus poeticus)

So far we like it and find the combination with Dr. Burnside and the red maple pleasing. It adds some red colour to the lower parts in the garden and gives Dr Burnside some grounding, making it look less artificial in its  red splendour. A few solitary bulbs of "Cum laude" seem to have been present in the delivery, albeit flowering earlier than proclaimed - what an odd mix! 

Camellias

This winter is unusually warm here in Germany. For the first time ever,  I have camellia and witchhazel flowering together on the terrace since christmas.

                                                                                         Camellia japonica "Hagoromo"
                                                            with witchhazel Hamamelis x intermedia "Pallida" in the background

Camellias have been growing in my garden since 1997, when the first plant was given to me: the perfect white Camellia "Shiragiku".
I planted it on the west side of the house (we then lived 400 m above sea level in the Taunus hills) where it survived several winters with lots of snow and temperatures down to -15 ° C. It started flowering only at the beginning of May, together with the white Rhododendron-Hybrid "Cunningham's White" which we had many of - so that the effect of the white perfect flowers was largely lost. When we moved to a lower area, the bush received a place on the north side of the new house, with lots of light from above but no sun. Here it has been thriving ever since, surviving the strongest winters without protection outdoors and it flowers at the beginning of  April  a month prior to the white rhododendrons. We have planted it in fresh rhododendron soil a couple of times - Camellias can be replanted like rhododendrons without loss to growth if done carefully. In our experience the only thing that would prevent them from flowering is a very dry summer and autumn. When the new flower buds are formed, late summer to October, they need a lot of water and the soil should always be moist. Otherwise they might throw off the flower buds in spring just when you wait for them to open.

My second Camellia was "Mary Phoebe Taylor". She is of a more delicate kind, pink flowers with long lank branches, that can be trailed up a wall. Her flowers are slightly hanging down, so they are best seen from below. We have replanted her in different positions several times and have found a place in the back of a border under tree cover which she seems to like. She is less frost-hardy than the other two.

My favourite is "Dr Burnside" - an amazing bush. I bought it in 2004 and planted it close to a west facing wall with no morning sun for protection. There it was rapidly overgrown by the rose "Rambling Rector" that grew next to it and I forgot about the camellia. In 2010 our new gardener Paul started work and he rediscovered it and moved it a bit to the front out of the wall's shade. And now the bush looks like this

and flowers every March/April - at a time when the garden is still quite bare. The sight of this bush in flower is stunning -  I pass by in the mornings when I go out and I always have to walk over and admire and check whether they are real or some Heinzelmännchen secretly attached plastic flowers to the bush - it looks artificial and a bit immodest and boisterous in our humble garden, but very healthy, and very out of this world in cold German early spring.

Camellia "Dr Burnside"